Anor-Log: Unseated

I have chosen to write this retrospectively, because I found it too distressing to write about as it happened. Attention agitated it, and it bulged all out of proportion. Anticipation picked up a pen, but dread began the sentence. Words slid in their own sweaty mess, unable to catch reality in all it’s horror. The fear was just too big to confine onto a piece of paper.

The day was coming. I felt the week sink through the thickness of time, and suddenly: there it was. Tomorrow. Behold, Tomorrow.
All I could do was watch Tomorrow heave in it’s final moments, then give birth to the monster. Today.
Today was the day, it had arrived.

The corpse of my fear lay dismembered thus: a full day back in hospital. Two clinics including weigh ins, a psychologist assessment and a key nurse appointment. Food negotiated out, quantities and calories loosely patched up by some stranger working in the cafe. My walks and activity doses crushed under hours and hours of sitting, chatting, thinking.
When it had been alive as Tomorrow, it had been so real. Ellie was already being pushed over the edge by the mere thought of it. The day itself was a fat alien. So unnatural and so unknown, of course it was threatening.
My anorexic routine was being hunted. In one day, I saw an end. An end of my will to go on, to progress into it. An end of reason. Ellie just wasn’t sure she’d make it. She’d never make it to the other side of all that sitting.

Here I sit, on the other side. The monster was slain and here lies Yesterday. What a mess. I have been covered in sticky guilt, but also indelible pride.

One day was serving up a large portion of anxiety. I was being force fed by my treatment: it was clear I couldn’t avoid it, I’d just have to try. Either Anonymous would stand by as I choked, or I’d swallow.
Today was the first of many that will treat my fear of sitting. One day, one pill to kill the pain of inactivity. Anxiety is an inevitable side effect.

Anticipation tested the day’s itinerary on Ellie’s imagination. I fed her small tastes of what the day would hold, to see how she’d react. Feverish panic followed hot and cold flushes. Confidence flared then was smothered by the gravity of what I was about to do: I was about to sacrifice a whole day’s activity.
Ellie’s blood thickened with my thighs.

Ellie chewed the day over for weeks in advance. She broke it into bite-sized pieces, into phases. Each phase was finely furnished with an assortment of chairs. The developing apolstering of my bottom would be crammed into these seats with contempt: I could at least prepare it.

Phase 1: The car journey to hospital. 45mins; subject to lumps of traffic congestion. High time pressure in the passenger seat; angry outbursts possible.
Phase 2: Clinic 1: Key Nurse and weigh in. 60 mins. Time usually smooth and syrupy, easy to consume and digest. Pleasant passing of time depending on what number the scales award me. Lower numbers can dampen sitting anxiety for the rest of the day.
Phase 3: Empty. Hours are steroids to bulk out the time between appointments and lunch. Sedative side effects for anxiety include the possibility of moving about corridors and town a little. Distraction recommended.
Phase 4: Lunch. Highly volatile and often resulting in a drama or crisis. Hallucinations are possible: featuring magnified calories of specific food substances, and anxious trips up and down the menu in search of something smaller, safer. Chair itself invites about 40mins: a neutral time for lunch.
Phase 5: Car journey to hospital. 5 mins: short and hostile. Streets inevitably constipated; anxiety pollution makes breathing here difficult.
Phase 6: The psychologist assessment. The crowning glory of the day: the big one. The one that would come one day, the wonder drug Ellie has been gagging for since Recovery reared it’s scarred head. Nowhere to hide in this chair. An hour, maybe two. Duration subject to reactions.
Phase 7: Car journey home. Please God don’t let it be any longer than 45 mins. Ah shit, another red light.
Phase 8: Anorexic bribery in form of a walk. No chairs here, it’s ok. You’re safe now: the day is nearly over. No chairs, only empty skies and muddy footpaths. Walking is a minor pain-killer to relieve any residual anxiety from sitting and/or eating.

Lunch was hard today.

Preparing for this feast of fear built the ground up under Ellie’s feet. We hoped it would make a fair and even battleground.
Ellie reduced the day down to numbers. Anxiety can understand those, even futuristic ones. She weighed the minutes she could see would be spent seated, and predicted her activity levels.
45+60+30+45+60 = the edge of anorexic tolerance.
Ellie’s findings were unprecedented and unexpected. Looking at this beast of the day, one would expect the numbers to be bigger. We checked her calculations over and over, but still we had the same result.
On paper, it worked on this one day of my life, I’d be sitting down for an extra 25mins. That’s 25mins more than a normal day at the hospital. Only 5 or 10 mins were shaved off my walks.
Why must this cost you so many calories, Ellie?

Now work out the calorific cost.
Let y be excess calories.y= x – (kcal x catastrophisation)

One can find the value of all this at the end on the world.
I just couldn’t make sense of it: the day was just too scary for reality to be telling the truth.

This is how I worked my way through one of the most challenging days of my recovery. I forced myself from chair to chair, and took care not to begin the next moment when my mouth was full of the present one.

I still carry the guilt I picked up from spending so long in all those chairs. Restricting my food didn’t succeed in making me immune from it. All it did was make Ellie feel like a cheat when she was promised some pride. A survivor’s guilt.
It is an unfortunate side effect to the “sitting” treatment. Anorexia almost always flares up, and restricts my food. Even after exhausting myself with a panic attack before 9 in the morning, Anonymous could not justify fuelling my lazy seated arse. She’d rather see me drained, propped up by the pine armrests.

Let me go.
Please, let this whole horrid episode be over.

And Now we are here. Now is calm, Now let Today go.

I see now why Ellie fought so hard to attend clinics yesterday. She has been desperate for these psychology sessions. The assessment itself lathered over an hour like balm. Words reel off my tongue and show themselves to my doctors exactly as they are in my head. In the stillness of the ED Unit, Ellie can stand back awhile. She reads over the notes on her life, as if it happened to someone else. She sees it, just for a moment, how it is.
Fine.
Sitting here just has to be fine, for it is necessary.

We shall have to wait for my next weigh in to see if all that sitting made any difference to my weight. We shall have to see if my anorexic predictions are correct: if it all as real as it is in my head.
There were so many calories blowing the day out of proportion.There were so many obese thoughts squeezing me tight where I sat, unmoving, in my seat.
And that had to be fine.

One day, it will all be.
Let it all just be fine.
Please Anonymous, even if only for one day, please just let me be.

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Published by missellie808

I have a friend called Anonymous. What is more romantic than the unknown?
She has given me goals, satisfaction.
She has taught me endurance.
She has taught me to put food in my mouth, and taste only guilt and shame.
She has taught me to relish the pain: our favourite date is self punishment.
She has given me an identity.
She is so good at surprises too! Just last week, I found she had given me Osteoporosis in my spine; Osteopenia in my hips; a BMI of 12.8; a weight of 38.9kg; and a weak heart.
"Near fatal", the doctor said. "Severe". Oh, she loved that.
They want to put me in hospital. She says I don't need anyone else, I have her. We will be together forever, she says. She is very supportive you see.
Anorexia Nervosa: my friend called Anonymous. Because what is more terrifying than the unknown?
Despite advice, I am choosing to fight this battle as an outpatient. I am doing this for and with my family. I want to be Ellie again.
This is me, choosing to recover from Anorexia Nervosa in a city obsessed by food.
Here is my journey xx
View all posts by missellie808

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